


Guns Don't Kill People

by Queue



Series: Northwest Passages [1]
Category: due South
Genre: Angst, Bondage, Hurt/Comfort, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2010-12-21
Updated: 2010-12-21
Packaged: 2017-10-13 22:49:18
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,022
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/142579
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Queue/pseuds/Queue





	Guns Don't Kill People

I smell gunshots the minute I open the door.

Life as a Chicago cop being what it is, this is not exactly an unfamiliar smell. Life as the Chicago cop lucky enough to be partnered with an expat Mountie being what _it_ is...well. We’ve been doing this thing we do—all these things—for quite a while now, watching each other’s back and front and sideways. And here’s one of the many things I’ve learned about Fraser over that time: the man may not be allowed to carry a firearm in this country, but he makes up for it bigtime with this amazing ability to get us into the kind of trouble where firearms are the only language everybody speaks. And since I myself pretty much have to carry a gun, given that Welsh doesn’t look too kindly on his detectives taking on the bad guys unarmed, I somehow always wind up doing the “talking” when Fraser’s manoeuvred us into trouble yet again. What with one thing and another, I’ve spent more time with the smell of gunshots since meeting the Mountie than I really ever wanted to.

Thing is, Fraser seems to _get_ something out of guns, whether it’s me or the asshat of the day doing the firing. As soon as I fumble my glasses out of wherever I stuffed them last time I was done with them and slap them onto my face so I don’t shoot the wrong guy, I see his expression change. Just a little—but I know him, and I see it like he’s drawing it in Technicolor just for me. Then I pull my piece and aim—and whether I fire it or not, whether I hit someone or miss on purpose, there’s something big and extra waaaaay back in his eyes as he watches my gun in my hands.

I don’t know what he sees. Whatever it is, though, it makes my stomach hurt a little.

Not unlike right now, if you want to know the truth. Because yeah, sure, this is a smell I know—hot metal, gun oil, a little bit of fire. But unless you live in a shooting range or an army barracks, it’s not a smell you usually get in wherever passes for your home.

Which, for me? Let’s face it. Chicago, Tuktoyaktuk, Sierra Leone, Bumfuck, New Jersey, it doesn’t matter any more: home is wherever Fraser is.

At the moment it’s here, in this second-floor walkup we found two years ago after weeks of chasing _Tribune_ leads and which is less crummy than either his Consulate closet or my post-Stella digs only because we’ve put in a metric ton of time to get it that way.

And which right now stinks of gunshots.

I’m through the door and crouched against the entry wall, gun out and ready, before I even realize I’ve moved. From there I do a quick mental break-in check, since that’s the only obvious explanation I can think of for the smell. But there’re no broken locks, no smashed breakables, no tossed furniture visible from here. Furthermore, now that I’ve had a chance to look the place over, I’m thinking that unless we’ve been hit by the only Stetson-wearing, deaf-wolf-owning home invader in metro Chicago, Fraser got here before I did. So it’s beginning to seem like the whole ducking-in-the-door-like-a-cop thing might’ve been a little unnecessary. Go, reflexes. Nice to know umpteen years of police work comes in handy on the home-defense front. And speaking of home... “Fraser?”

“In here, Ray.” A jangle of metal comes from the bedroom, and as I walk toward it, tossing my coat and scarf towards the couch and unclipping my holster, there’s the sound of something being shoved under the bed.

And the smell is getting stronger.

By the time I reach the bedroom door, I’ve got my breathing under control (he answered, he’s fine, whatever happened he’ll have a logical explanation for) and my mouth open to smartass at him. Whatever I was gonna say dies on my lips, though, as I take in the scene before me.

Item 1: the corner of Fraser’s brown-leather gun case sticking out past the comforter where he tried to hide it under the bed. Item b: that cushion-with-arms thing Fraser uses when he reads himself to sleep at night, sitting over against the wall with a scorched hole in the wide part and blackened stuffing coming out onto the floor. Final item: Fraser himself, standing at parade rest at the foot of our bed, wearing that stony, untouchable face he hasn’t put on for me since about the second week we knew each other. And hard as a rock under his RCMP sweats.

Not to be Captain Obvious, but something is a little off here.

Before I can ask, he’s answering. “Apologies if the smell alarmed you, Ray. I was performing routine maintenance on my sidearm and had a bit of an accident.”

“An accident. With your sidearm.” I feel like a parrot, but I can’t help myself; I’m still processing the situation, and right now the echo game’s all I got.

“Yes, Ray.”

“An _accident_ , Fraser?” Okay, the brain’s waking up a little here, and _c’mon_ , Benton. Pull the other one. Mr. First In His Class fired his gun, indoors, without meaning to? There is no fucking way that’s the truth.

“Yes, Ray. Of course.” What else would it be, his innocenter-than-thou expression says. Nice try, Mountie boy. Problem is, no matter how convincing you make it sound, that sad-assed explanation doesn’t quite cover what we’re looking at here.

For one thing, why would Fraser have been cleaning his sidearm in the _bedroom_ , of all places? For another, the hole in that cushion sits dead fucking center. That’s not a ricochet shot; someone damned well took aim at the thing. Plus which, in his rush to hide whatever it is he’s hiding—which I’m starting to get an idea about, and it is not a happy idea—Fraser left his polishing cloths out on the bed, and they are _pristine_. Not a smudge or smear on ‘em. Whatever he was doing with his gun, no cleaning was involved.

And then there’s the fact that Fraser is lying to me. Has been lying to me since I walked in. Lied to me _proactively_ , before I even had a chance to request an explanation for what in holy hell is going on here. Stood there in our bedroom, evidence all around him, and tried to sell me the innocent-Mountie act he knows I haven’t bought from the beginning.

In fact, the only part of Fraser’s body that’s telling me the truth is his cock, which is tenting his sweats even more now than it was when I walked in the door. And between the anger building in my chest and the hardwired reaction my body has to Fraser’s, I’m getting harder by the second myself, my cock swelling painfully against the seam of my jeans. My hands _itch_ to touch him. Not to hit—once was enough for that, thank you kindly—but to pull and twist and tease, to make him as crazy as he’s making me.

Okay, then. Let’s do this. Not like it’s the first time sex and anger have collided in our bed. If I can’t make him tell me the truth when we’re upright, maybe I can get it out of him when his ass is mine.

“Okay, Fraser. Whatever you say.” I drop my holster on the dresser, kick off my boots, and walk slowly towards him. I can feel the smile stretching my lips. If he was paying the attention he usually does, he’d be scared of that smile. But he thinks I bought the act—which itself says a lot about how screwed up he is at the moment—and he’s smiling back at me now, swaying toward me, hands coming up to close over my shoulders.

Before he can finish the move, I push him backwards, a little hard and a little off-center. He hits the bed with a bounce his face says he didn’t expect, and I’m on him before he can recover, knees either side of his hips and his head cradled between the hands I had my gun in not five minutes before. I lick out at his lips, grinding my cock down against his as I do it, and he moans at me and surges up, trying to capture my mouth and take over the kiss.

No chance, Benton. This is _my_ show.

I shove him flat and come down on top of him, wrapping one hand around both of his wrists and using the other to angle his head just where I want it for my mouth to get at his. I tongue-fuck him deep, licking into his mouth, fingers clenched in the hair at his nape. He moans again and his wrists flex hard under my fingers, even as he hitches his hips up at me like he can’t help himself, rubbing his cock against me with every move. I lift my head and just look at him, spread out there under me. His hands are shaking. The right one has a big smear of gun oil across the palm; I can smell it on him, along with the sex and something that’s an awful lot like fear.

Oh, yeah. I think I know what’s going on. And I think I know what might break Fraser open enough to share it with me before it tears him apart.

Christ, I hope I’m right.

I lean hard on his wrists with the hand holding them, and he gets the message: when I move away from him he stays where I’ve put him, arms stretched up above his head, panting for breath. The cords are still where we left them last time, coiled up behind the bedposts so they won’t shock the guests we never have. (And why Fraser thinks we’d be inviting these hypothetisis guests into the bedroom anyway—with maybe one exception— I do not know. But whatever.) They’re these long soft frou-frou things, with these fucking gay tassels on one end, but I’ll give ‘em this: they tie into some pretty solid knots when knots are what’s required. And they leave way less obvious marks than my service cuffs (which always irritated me to use with Fraser anyway, because bondage doesn’t come much more stereotypical than handcuffing a cop with his own equipment).

Plus the slipknot loops we usually use loosen up without too much trouble at the end, even if your motor control’s not so good by then.

I pull the cords up from the floor, stretching over Fraser’s body to do it, and then slide each of Fraser’s hands through a loop, pulling the free end to tighten them. Fraser’s breathing’s gotten noisy, like he wants to stay silent but can’t quite pull it off, and every time I touch him he shudders. I skip the ankle cords—I’ve made my point, and the plan that’s forming through the haze in my head means I need his legs free—and slide backwards off the bed, stripping his sweats and shorts down and off him as I go. Standing, I get rid of my jeans and sweatshirt as fast as I can, dropping them in a heap next to Fraser’s clothes, and then knee my way back onto the bed between his legs.

And then I kneel there and just _stare_ at him, spread out on our bed like he’s trapped and escaping at the same damn time. He shudders again from head to toe as I watch him, muscles standing out in his arms as he pulls against the cords, cock so hard it’s leaking where it lays up against his belly. I’m drymouthed just looking at him. Especially his cock, which I have a serious thing for at the best of times and which right now I want to taste so bad my hands are shaking.

But I keep them to myself. Because no. Not going there yet, much as I bone-deep want to. I got something to say first, and I got Fraser right where I want him so he has to hear it.

“Fraser.” Uh-huh. He knows where I’m going with this, I can see it in his face. Shit. The ways we know each other? He damned well ought to know.

“Ray—”

“ _Fraser._ ” He flinches away from me, as much as the cords will let him, and his eyes close. My throat hurts, but I keep going. “Let’s try this again. Gunshots, Fraser. _Gunshots._ At least one. I smelled it as soon as I walked in. And I know I didn’t bring it in with me, because hey, y’know what? _I_ didn’t fire my piece today, and neither did anyone else on the squad. Which leaves only one obvious suspect, and you get no prize for guessing who that might be. Now what in the hell is going on?” He shakes his head against the pillow, biting hard into his lower lip. “Benton. _Talk_ to me.”

He opens his eyes and gives me his best innocent look, which isn’t much to write home about right now. “Ray, there’s nothing to talk about.”

“Bullshit.”

“Really, Ray.” He must see something in my face behind the bad-cop glare, because—like an idiot—he pushes it. Cock’s blocking the brain, Benton—but don’t let me stop you, eh? “Honestly. I told you, it was an acci—”

“Bull _shit_. The odds of you having an accident with your gun make my chances of winning the lottery look high. Plus I know you, Fraser, and any time you say ‘honestly’? It’s a lie. Because when you’re telling the truth—which is almost always—you fucking well don’t bother.” Another wince. Goddammit, Benton, _give_. Give, and then give it up, and we’ll be good, yeah? “C’mon, Ben. Don’t give me that shit. Don’t lie to me. We owe each other better than that.”

Christ, that’s a weird expression he’s wearing. If I didn’t know better, I’d swear he looked _relieved_ , mixed up in there somewhere with the misery and the anger and the serious fucking need. “Fine, Ray, _fine_. Yes. I— just— _please_ , Ray. I don’t want to— I’ll tell you, I promise, I _will_ , I just— I need—” He’s flat-out writhing now, hands fisted around the cords above his wrists, and the broken look on his face hits me like an unprotected punch to the gut. If anything, his cock is harder than before.

Which...hm. Maybe I’ve got this backwards. Maybe the giving it up’s gotta come first. Okay, let’s roll with that and see where it gets us. I put a hand on his thigh and bare my teeth at him.

“You _need_ , Ben? _What_ do you need?” Not like I don’t know, being as how I’m not stupid and I know him and, hey, I’m also a fucking guy, so _duh_. But maybe I can use this to get at what’s going on here. Another thing I’ve learned about Fraser these last few years: needle him enough and he always, always reacts.

“You— Don’t make me say it, Ray. You _know_.” Color washes down his chest—more blood than I’d have bet he had left in his body anywhere outside his cock. Christ on the cross. More than four years we’ve been doing this now, and he still has such a hard time asking for things when he’s pinned down like this. That’s one thing I _do_ know. I also know he hopes I’ll take pity on him because of it, assume he can’t talk about anything just because he can’t tell me how much he wants me to bite his nipples hard, to put my fist up his ass, to make him suck me off on his knees with his hands tied behind him and his eyes open the whole damned time.

Oh, Ben. You wish. But we don’t do pity, you and me. Been there, done that, donated the whole t-shirt collection to Goodwill a long time back. So you gotta tell me. Tell me, and you get it. Tell me, and whatever it is, I’ll give it to you. I’ll take care of you. Just tell me. “Tell me.”

He sinks his teeth into his lip again, shuts his eyes like I’ve hit him, then opens them and stares me in the face. His eyes are all pupil, and his shoulders are sweating. “Fuck me, Ray. Fuck me. _Do_ it.” He leaves off the “please” at the end, but I hear it loud and clear anyway.

I keep my eyes on his as I slide a pillow under his hips and reach for the bottle we keep at the end of the bed. He watches the fingers I slick up, then switches back to my face as I slide those fingers towards his ass. When the first one hits his asshole, his head goes back and his knees jerk up around my hips where I’m kneeling between his legs. I push that finger in as far as it’ll go, slow and steady, feeling him tighten down around me and then open in a rush of heat. Up close like this, I can see so much: the twitch and flutter in the ring of muscle around my finger, the skin of his belly slick with sweat and pre-come, the way his thighs tense when my finger hits him just right.

It’s a lot to know about someone. That they want you this much. That they need you this much.

That that much want and need might not, in the end, be enough.

When my finger’s all the way in I keep it there, right up inside him, and I wait. He groans through gritted teeth, bracing his feet against the sheets, and tries to impale himself further on my hand, but there’s nowhere for him to go and I’m not giving him more until he meets my eyes again. Finally he opens his eyes and looks at me.

“Want another, Ben?” My voice sounds like _I’m_ the one being fucked—what Ben calls a feedback loop. Whatever it is, it’s turning my crank something fierce.

“God, _yes._ “ He braces his feet more, pulling himself off my finger as much as he can, and then shoves himself down again, hard. The next time he pulls that trick, I’ve got a second slick finger ready for him when he comes back down, and the groan he gives at that sends a shiver straight up my spine. When he shuts his eyes again, though, I pull my fingers all the way out. He whines at me wordlessly, raising his head as far from the pillow as he can and lifting his hips towards my hand.

“Eyes open, Ben. You want more, you keep looking me in the eye.”

His eyes snap open, a spark of anger flickering in his face, and for a second I think he’s gonna refuse. But he puts those eyes on mine and he keeps them there, despite what I can see it costing him. So I put my fingers back into him, twisting and scissoring in that incredible soft heat, giving him a third and then a fourth, bracing my thumb at the base of his cock and fucking him with the rest of my hand, holding him right on the verge of coming but never quite letting him tip over the edge. He shouts and sweats and strains against the cords, but he keeps his eyes open through sheer force of will and he looks at me the whole damn time.

When I’ve had enough of watching him just barely hold it together, I pull my fingers out one last time, come up off my knees, and slide my cock into him up to the hilt in one long thrust. The sound he makes when I bottom out is one I’ve never heard from him, and before I can brace myself enough to get a hand on his cock he’s coming like a freight train, shooting all over his belly and his chest and the Henley he’s still wearing, head tilted back and eyes screwed tight shut. Ben like this is the hottest thing I’ve ever seen, hotter than anything I could ever even imagine. And when he opens his eyes and looks at me again something just...breaks loose in me. I push his legs up and back, so I can brace myself against his thighs, and I touch his face with my free hand, once. And then I’m fucking him, just _pounding_ his ass, with him watching _me_ now, wearing that same expression from earlier, misery and anger and relief all mixed up together under the fucked-out exhaustion.

And then I’m lost.

*****

When I wake up, I’m alone in our bed. Fraser’s side’s still warm, which lets me know how long I’ve been out. Not record-setting, by any means, and tonight that’s a good thing.

So okay, Kowalski. Break it down. What happened there? Answer: I got part of what I wanted—well, okay, I got a lot of what I wanted—and I don’t think Fraser exactly came out on the losing end of the equation.

But—and here, my friend, is the problem—that was just the surface stuff. We’re not done here yet, not by a long shot.

All right, then. Let’s take this thing to the next level. Let’s figure out what the _fuck_ is going on with the Mountie.

I pull my ass out of bed and stumble into sweats, figuring out they’re Fraser’s only when they about fall off me the minute I move and I have to doubleknot the fucking cord just to save myself from a terminal case of plumber’s crack. Whatever, they’re clothes, and I need those if I’m going to get Fraser to talk to me now without freezing my ass off, which would kind of defeat the point. On my way out the door I grab my sweatshirt from the pile on the floor, which now includes Fraser’s come-stained Henley.

When I get out to the living room, Fraser’s curled up on the couch, cocooned in the Hudson’s Bay blanket Frannie bought him for Christmas last year, eyes fixed on the tree we’ve put up in the corner. Everything I can see of his feet and legs is bare, which means—yeah, I’m wearing the sweats he had on when I got home, and I’ll bet Canadian dollars to Dief’s donuts he didn’t bother fishing another pair out of the dresser, so that blanket’s right up against his skin. Jesus fucking Christ, Benton. Hair shirt much?

I plunk myself down in the kitty-corner chair and haul the afghan Frannie made me for the same Christmas around my shoulders. My feet are already cold—big surprise there, being as how they’re the skinniest thing on my skinny-assed frame—and we don’t keep the heat high enough in the winter to make the floor anything I want to spend much time on, so I fold my legs up under me.

And I wait.

After about a million years, Fraser starts to talk.

“Sometimes, when I’m out with Diefenbaker in the morning, I run shirtless.”

This is so completely not anything I expected to come out of his mouth that my own mouth drops pretty much all the way open. Um. Say what?

Fraser flicks his eyes over to me and cracks a quick smile at my expression, which must be something to see. Then he goes back to staring down the tree. “Just to...feel what it’s like.”

Ohhhhkay. “Yeah?” I’m still not sure where this is going—but keep talking, Fraser. Keep making noise so I can find you in there.

Evidently Fraser figures out that I’m not following, because he sighs and tries again. “When I take Diefenbaker out for our morning runs these days, it’s often on the chilly side. Chicago doesn’t reach anything approaching the temperature extremes found in the Territories, of course. But the combination of the damp and the wind does sometimes become...uncomfortable. Nor do I wish to repeat my experience last year with what Dr. MacIntyre called ‘walking pneumonia.’”

I wait, but he seems to have run down. I think about how to prompt him. Right. “So you dress warm for the weather when you run, yeah? Like any sane person would?”

This smile’s even briefer than the last one, and Fraser doesn’t move his eyes away from the tree. “Interesting choice of words, Ray. But yes, that’s what I do. Or rather, that’s what I used to do. Recently, however, I’ve found myself...not. Doing that.”

Not doing...oh. “Not dressing warm, you mean. Running shirtless.” He nods. I think back over the way the early-morning weather’s been for the last month or so. “Christ, Fraser, you must have been freezing out there. What the fuck were you thinking?”

He laughs, or something like it. “I wasn’t thinking, Ray. I was _feeling_. Trying to, anyway. Trying to feel _something_. Trying to let it in, the cold—to embrace it, even. To remember how it feels to experience that immediacy—the sharpness of the wind off the lake, the way it cuts into your lungs when you breathe, the way your skin tightens against it without your volition. Cold is... _insistent_ about being felt. I wanted that. I needed that.”

“Cold. Okay.” Now we’re getting somewhere, though it’s taken me a couple of minutes to see it. Where he sounds like he’s going with this is a place I’m pretty sure I’ve been. More than once, in fact. And since “cold” is the closest I’ve ever been able to get to describing how it feels...well, cold, for me, is not a good thing. But Fraser—look where he grew up, where he figured out who he wanted to be and trained himself to be that man. Where his heart is. Fraser is _friends_ with cold. Buddies, even. In some ways, cold is home to him. And if I’m right about where he’s at, it’s about as far as you can get from anything that feels like home.

“Yes. But I can’t— I don’t— I couldn’t feel it, Ray. Not the cold. Not the wind. Nothing else. Not for quite some time. It’s— I can’t explain it. Not clearly. It’s...it’s as though I’m...insulated from everything around me. Wrapped in cotton. Walled away behind thick glass. Remote. As though I’m too removed from the world, or the world from me, for anything to get through to me. To touch me. To matter. Nothing _matters_.”

If I were standing up and dressed, my heart would be in my boots. Nothing matters? I try to keep what that does to me off my face, but I don’t get the message to my vocal cords fast enough to stop the sound that forces its way out. Doesn’t matter, because Fraser doesn’t hear it—and his next words set me straight, even as they make it pretty clear just how thin a line my partner’s walking here.

“Except you. I _need_ you, Ray.” He flicks another glance at me and tries to smile again. It’s not a real successful attempt, but under the circumstances I appreciate it. “Being with you. Working with you. Making love with you. It makes me _feel_. Even through the—the insulation. The glass. And it. Reminds me. Makes me see, makes me remember. Obligation. Duty. Responsibility. Promises. Things that matter. _People_ that matter. You. What we do. What we stand for. Without that, I don’t know— I can’t be sure—” His voice sounds like it’s rusting out, but we both know there’s one more thing he has to tell me. He clears his throat and keeps going, somehow. “It wasn’t an accident. Ray. You know that, of course. It was just... Well. I am _trained_ in the handling of firearms, after all, and licensed to use them for the protection of others—which _matters_ , Ray, it _does_ —and I get... _frustrated_ at being forestalled in that way here, as though I am somehow incompetent or incapable, less qualified than others to properly enforce the laws of the country in which I live.”

Okay, so that’s what’s been living in Fraser’s eyes when he watches me shoot on the job. Ouch.

“And today...well, today was my day to stand guard, so I had rather a lot of time to think about these things.” I wince. Fraser’s a brooder at the best of times, which this most definitely is not—and toy-soldier duty is never easy for him even if things are going well. Talk about a stupid waste of a gifted cop. “When I returned home, I was...in some distress. I cast about for a task, something to keep my hands busy, to give me _some_ sense of accomplishment. Cleaning my sidearm seemed...logical, somehow.”

I shift in my chair, and he looks at me again, a wry twist to his lips. “I know, Ray. But I needed _something_ —”

I lift a hand to stop him. “I get it, Fraser. You don’t have to explain.” I don’t want him sidetracking himself now. Not when we’re so close to the heart of it.

He goes back to staring at the tree. “And when I got the case out, it was the most natural thing in the world to put it down on the bed beside me, and to remove the cleaning supplies, and to take out my gun, and to hold it in my hands, where it belongs. And suddenly I felt— I felt— I wanted—” He chokes, and for a second I think he’s done, but he shakes his head once fast and I can actually see him straighten his spine. Strong, he’s so strong. Jesus. “So instead I chose a target. And I aimed, and I fired, and I made my shot count. And it just felt so... _easy_.”

No worries, Frase, I never liked that cushion anyway. Since when have you gone for the easy choice? Next time, buddy, aim for the super and save us a little rent. Don’t you dare, don’t you fucking _dare_ leave me behind. Hey, if I worked for the Ice Queen, I’d probably want to shoot myself, too. If you die, I will be homeless.

I don’t say any of that.

I unwind myself from the chair instead, and I go over to Fraser on the couch. (And y’know, people are so fucking weird, it’s a miracle we didn’t become extinct a long time ago. Because Fraser is walking on a very high and crumbly ledge here and I do not know if I’m gonna be able to pull him away from it in time, and that frightens me worse than anything else has, _ever_. And yet a tiny corner of my brain still thinks this would be a good time to bitch at him about maybe keeping the heat enough above freezing so the floor doesn’t turn to ice, being as how we do not actually live in an igloo. Small distractions in heavy times, I guess. It’s one way to stay sane, anyway.)

When I get there, I stand in front of him, knees bumping his, until he finally looks up at me. I lay my hands against his face, blue and red and green in the lights from the tree and so, so tired and scared, and I hold his eyes with mine for a long time, both of us still and silent and focused on the other. I try—it’s so stupid, but I have to try—to put how I feel about him and about what he’s told me in my face for him to maybe somehow see. Because I can’t think of anything to say out loud that won’t sound desperate, and he’s desperate enough as it is.

Just as a tremble starts up in my knees—they got kind of a workout tonight, and I’m a little on the tired side too, here—Fraser suddenly moves. For a minute I think he’s trying to get away from me, and I go dizzy so fast I know for a fact I’m gonna fall. Which works out well, because it turns out Fraser’s lunging _towards_ me, clutching at the afghan around me with both hands and using it to pull me down onto him like he’s drowning and I’m the only thing he can find that floats.

I end up straddling him again, thighs around his waist and my cock snug up against his, but there’s nothing remotely sexual about this now. Fraser’s buried his head in my chest, his arms clamped hard around my body and his hands fisted in the afghan over my shoulder blades, and he’s shaking like a fucking leaf and rocking back and forth and I can’t feel him breathing at all.

Okay. Okay. God.

After a minute I realize it’s maybe been a while since I’ve taken in any oxygen either, so I take a deep breath against him, and the bellows heave of his sides against my thighs says he got the hint. The shuddering-rocking-silent thing doesn’t stop, but I didn’t expect it to. I rub my hands up and down his back over the blanket, waist to nape, in time with the broken rhythm of his breathing. At least we got touch, I tell myself. Touch is good. We know how to do touch, Fraser and me, and we do it well. As long as we got contact, we got something we can work with.

Provided, that is, that both of us know what’s there that needs working _on_. Makes it a little tough to fix things otherwise. Anger flashes through me at that, and this time I don’t tamp it down. I slide a hand up into his hair and tilt his head up—gently, gently—so I can see his face when I ask him. I try to make this gentle, too, as much as I can, but I gotta ask it.

“We are _partners_ , Benton. You know that. Why didn’t you tell me? You could have. I would’ve understood.”

His face crumples and he ducks his head back down, arms tightening around me even more. Good thing I got strong bones, because this emotional CPR is a little tough on the ribcage. He’s mumbling something into my chest, repeating it over and over. I put my own head down, as best I can, and try to hear what he’s saying. Finally it comes clear.

“Couldn’t...ashamed...couldn’t...ashamed... _couldn’t_...”

I sigh and slide the hand in his hair up through it, stroking over his scalp, petting him like I do Dief after a visit to the vet, and he goes silent again under me, like I’ve given him permission to rest. Yeah. I understand that, too.

See, what I now _know_ is going on? Is pretty much what I _figured_ was going on from the minute I walked into our bedroom this afternoon. And I have indeed been here myself, once a long time ago and then another time a lot more recently than that. Mostly I’ve put it behind me, as much as you ever do. But I didn’t get out clean, and there’s a scar on my left calf Fraser’s never asked about that I should probably show him soon (after we’ve both had some decent sleep). Because maybe if he sees that scar—that outward and visible sign of my damage, same as what he’s been trying to keep locked up inside himself—he’ll get that the glass he’s looking through isn’t one-way.

And maybe if he gets that, if he believes me when I tell him I’ve seen that glass from the inside—maybe then he’ll trust me when I tell him that with the right tools and a little help, it can be broken away without causing more than superficial cuts.

Without... _killing_. Anyone.


End file.
